Susanna Phelps Gage
| Susanna Phelps Gage | |
|---|---|
| Born | Susanna Phelps December 26, 1857 Morrisville, New York |
| Died | October 15, 1915 (aged 57) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Spouse | Simon Henry Gage |
Susanna Phelps Gage (1857–1915) was an American embryologist and comparative anatomist. She initially worked on the anatomy of small animals and humans, later shifting into neurology to study the embryological development of the brain and the anatomy of the human nervous system. She also developed a new and widely adopted method for making anatomical teaching models out of paper rather than wax.
Susanna Stuart Phelps was born December 26, 1857, in Morrisville, New York. Her father, Henry Samuel Phelps, was a businessman, and her mother, Mary Austin Phelps, had been a schoolteacher prior to marriage. In 1903, after her parents' death, Phelps gave the family home to the town of Morrisville to become the Morrisville Public Library; since 2005 it has been on the National Register of Historic Places.
Phelps was educated at Cazenovia Seminary and in 1875 went on to Cornell University, initially for her undergraduate degree. She studied broadly, in Latin, English literature, history, and the sciences, becoming the first woman in the university's history to take a laboratory physics class. While still an undergraduate, she became fascinated with zoology and especially anatomy, taking every class offered in these subjects. She went on to earn her Ph.D. at Cornell in 1880.
In 1881, Phelps married Simon Henry Gage (1851–1944), who was already an assistant professor of histology and embryology at Cornell, where he would spend his entire academic career. They had a son, Henry Phelps Gage, who became a physicist and inventor.
After gaining her Ph.D., Gage pursued independent research in comparative anatomy and embryology. Like many women scientists in the late 19th century, Gage never held a formal job congruent with her abilities and spent some of her time supporting her husband's career—for example as an editor of at least one edition of his book The Microscope and as an illustrator for some of his papers. Although Gage's work was often overshadowed by that of her husband—the first edition of American Men and Women of Science lists her as "Mrs. S.H. Gage"—she became a respected scientist in her field, publishing in such presitigious journals as Science, American Journal of Anatomy, The Anatomical Record, and The American Naturalist, among others. In the second edition of American Men and Women of Science, she was one of only 25 women to be featured as highly significant in her field. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and was a member of the American Anatomical Association, the American Society of Zoologists, the American Microscopical Society, and the German Anatomical Society.
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